Object Snaps

Object Snaps (Osnap) is one of your best friends. As with Ortho, this collection of drawing tools allows you to create your drawings with greater accuracy. If you want to draw a line from the end point of another line, don’t just pick a spot near the end point of that line and call it good, use the endpoint (‘end’) snap instead. This one seems obvious, but some new users just don’t get it. All of the osnap settings are potentially useful (even parallel!) – so familiarize yourself with all of them.

Here’s a screenshot of the Perpendicular osnap in action. Normally if you have only one osnap active, you will see only that osnap’s yellow helper symbol.

If you have multiple osnaps active, you might see the helper symbol of an osnap that you don’t want to use. For example, if I had both Endpoint and Perpendicular active, the Endpoint symbol might show up at the end of the line. If I want to use Perpendicular, I can move my mouse around until hopefully AutoCAD figures out what I want, or I can hit the Tab button to cycle through the active osnaps. Very useful!

Each osnap setting can be set “on the fly” by typing its three-letter abbreviation (in which case it will be the only active osnap) or multiple osnaps can be set in the Osnap dialog (all of which can then be toggled on and off with the F3 button).

If you right-click on the Osnap button, you can access the object snap settings, or you can just type Osnap in the command line.

Here’s a list of the abbreviations:

ENDpoint	EXTension (of a line or arc)	TANgent
MIDpoint	NODe (used for points or dimensions)	NEArest
INTersection	QUAdrant( of a circle or an arc)	PARallel
CENter	INSertion (point of a block)	PERpendicular
APParent intersection (useful when Z values don’t match)